Scheduling an email to be sent in Outlook (delaying the delivery)

I always knew there had to be a feature in Outlook to schedule the sending of an email for a certain date in the future, I just never had the motivation to actually find it until this week.

In Outlook 2007 (it is probably available in older versions as well), when composing a new email goto the Options tab, and click the Delay Delivery button, set the date and time you wish the message to be sent, and send the email as normal.

The email will remain in your Outbox until the specified date and time, which means that you will obviously need to have Outlook open at that time for it to send (otherwise it will be sent as soon as you open Outlook the next time).

There are quite a few uses for this feature like when you want to delay the kick off of a project for a while (but want to get the ideas out of your head now) or when uou want to thank a client a week after they purchase (if you do this alot, consider getting an autoresponder like Aweber).

You can also setup some rules to delay the delivery (it should really be called Delay Sending...) of all emails (or groups of emails) by setting up a rule with the following conditions (taken from Outlook help docs):

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts, and then click New Rule.
2. In the Step 1: Select a template box, , under Start from a Blank Rule, click Check messages after sending, and then click Next.
3. In the Step 1: Select condition(s) list, select any options that you want, and then click Next.
4. If you do not select any check boxes, a confirmation dialog box appears. If you click Yes, the rule you are creating will be applied to all messages that you send.
5. In the Step 1: Select action(s) list, select defer delivery by a number of minutes.
6. In the Step 2: Edit the rule description (click an underlined value) box, click the underlined phrase a number of and enter the number of minutes for which you want the messages to be held before sending.
7. Delivery can be delayed up to 120 minutes.
8. Click OK, and then click Next.
9. Select any exceptions that you want.
10. Click Next.
11. In the Step 1: Specify a name for this rule box, type a name for the rule.
12. Select the Turn on this rule check box.
13. Click Finish.

This is useful if you want to delay all messages from sending for 5 minutes if you like to have a buffer between hitting send and it doing damage. Useful if you regularly forget to attach documents to emails, and only realise 3 seconds after you click send, or if you like to draft long emails but are always afraid that you will hit send or press ALT+S by accident.

Do you use the Delay Delivery function in Outlook for any other reasons?